May 15, 2011

Gingrich talked about having "a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history." Yglesias liken this to "the kind of techniques that were used to prevent African-Americans (and many poor whites as well) from voting in the Jim Crow South."

Well, you can expect to hear the Jim-Crow-South meme from Democrats whenever there's any talk about about restrictions on voting. We're hearing it in Wisconsin over the voter ID law. Republicans who want to pursue these issues need to have some good responses ready.

The most conventional response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.

The question I've used as the title of this post suggests the beginning of one response, but it needs to be filled out with some substantive, believable vision of a better future. Gingrich had some substance: He wants schools to do a much better job of teaching American history. But he could have stayed with that, not brought up the notion of "a voting standard." If that was an idle rhetorical flourish, it was incompetent, because he handed a chunk of red meat to his enemies.

99 comments:

It's a fair point to say that one shouldn't be obsessed with how things went in the past. America has changed for the better on racial matters and failure to notice that is failure to engage the world as it is. But history is something that has to be considered and it's naive to think that voter eligibility laws can't or won't be manipulated for bad purposes, on either side.

I think we can safely assume that Gingrich will involuntarily hand the Democratic lions huge chunks of red meat in the near future.

Newt Gingrich, while brillant, is also amazingly delusional. This is the man, who while Speaker of the House, led an impeachment drive on an adulterous president while in the middle of a rather notorious affair himself. Because, you know, the press NEVER reports Republican pecadillos.

Newt is never going to be more than a punching bag for the left. He has too many albatrosses hanging around his neck, many not even personal. He was/is a big global warming alarmist, for example. He is going nowhere as a candidate.

Yes, I always thought history was one of the basics in school, but, then, the teacher unions weren't the power back then.

I don't know about making knowledge of history a test to vote the way it is for citizenship, but we forget there were considerable restrictions on the franchise having nothing to do with race or gender. Even when most Americans had a decent basic education, a lot of people's knowledge of history was restricted to pop culture stuff like Washington chopping down the cherry tree.

MarkG said...

Liberals see everything through race-colored glasses.

Hah! Good one.

AJ Lynch said...

This morning David Gregory asked Newt if his claim that we are a "Food Stamp Nation" wasn't a racist accusation against the 1st black president? Newt should have walked off the set.

No, he should have said, "Most of the 14% on food stamps are white middle class families put in that position by an incompetent President. His race is immaterial to me".

I've said essentially the same thing as Newt. It isn't racist, regardless of what the listener wants to invent. We have a system in which the most butt-ugly stupid 2% decides the election. Basic knowledge of history, economics, and civics should be required to vote.

Our founding fathers did not give us a democracy. The only portion of government elected by the "masses" was the House. Senators were selected by the States, the Judiciary appointed by the Executive, and the Executive selected by the Electoral College.

Our founding fathers would likely cringe at the abject ignorance of the the average voter, and I would wager that most would fault Newt for his leniency.

You're giving Matt too much credit. People who make inflamatory charges of racism should have concrete proof.

Those that talk about "dog-whistles" and "Codewords" should be attacked for what they are - Racebaiters. Matt is a scumbag who's trying to smear Gingrich as a racist. Just like he's tried to smear the tea-party and every Republican as racists.

The usual know-nothing responses to Gingrich from the hysteria cases of left and right miss the point. The popular vote is not sacrosanct. HL Mencken, no biblethumping rightist, said much the same. Now, some populist leftists might not care for the idea of ...voting criteria (say a degree...or at least passing a reading test on the LOWV voting guide)-- but that would probably keep like the....rednecks out of voting booths as much as it would illiterate leftists.

Besides, even southern boys should read Civil war history and learn something about the hustlers and crackpots (like Jefferson Davis, and most CSA generals, RE Lee included) who gave their farms away and killed a few hundred thousand doing it.

and I would be in favor of requiring journalists, reporters, and radio and TV announcers to be licensed, and a requirement for licensure would be passing basic high school math and physics courses woth a grade of C or better.

Besides, even southern boys should read Civil war history and learn something about the hustlers and crackpots (like Jefferson Davis, and most CSA generals, RE Lee included) who gave their farms away and killed a few hundred thousand doing it.

If J thinks Jefferson Davis, one of the heroes of Buena Vista and one of the most innovative Secretaries of War (or Defense), is a hustler or a crackpot, or that Robert E Lee gave his (it was his wife's) farm away, I think we have our best argument for Newt's voting test.

12:07--going to war with little ammo and few weapons does not a genius make--that meets the criteria of crackpot. (Lee, Beauregard, the CSA cabinet guilty as well). And Davis got even nuttier post-bellum--biblethumper, paranoid, mason, etc

I think it would be an interesting history lesson to learn how big city, machine Democrats exploited the racism of white southerners in order to gain electoral advantage. There have been many political movements as wrong and as cynical as the American left, but there have been few so self righteous in their cynicism and mistakes.

They are all racers. The good news is that by the time the campaign starts, the accusation will be overused so much that it will be almost unheard.

As to Newt, I'm not a fan, but I was shocked to read this, YoungHegelian, by his daughter about his"notorious" affair. I have always thought that he carried on while his wife was in the hospital being treated for cancer and divorced her as she lay dying.

Tom Tom, even Gingrich's low-grade klassix schtick is too much for you (as is CW history)--so you resort to your usual feeble hominems. Maybe you can get a "Larry the Cable guy for Prez" campaign rolling here on Hickhouse.

@PatCa. Thanks for posting the article by Gingrich's daughter. It doesn't make him look good, but the facts, as given by the daughter, are somewhat exculpatory. However, the liberals love the most damning narrative, and that's probably the one that will stick.

William,You have your history a little backward. The Democratic Party (though then called the "Republican Party") was founded by Jefferson and Madison - southern plantation owners - and co-opted the northern urban populists in order to gain voting "mass," which the southerners did not have by themselves, and so it remained until for a decade, or two at the most, in the middle of the 20th century, the northern "liberals" gained the upper hand in the party.

12:07--going to war with little ammo and few weapons does not a genius make--that meets the criteria of crackpot. (Lee, Beauregard, the CSA cabinet guilty as well). And Davis got even nuttier post-bellum--biblethumper, paranoid, mason, etc

So little ammo and so few weapons they came damned close to winning. Hardly crackpots.

And lots of people are Masons and Bible thumpers.

I imagine they're the ones who thump the Hell out of J on a regular basis.

Edutcher's support for the Confederacy, and Jefferson Davis, proto- klansman (not to say bumbler), duly noted--

Davis was a Klansman?

Someone tell Bedford Forrest.

And I voiced no support for the Lost Cause. I merely point out facts.

J hates that.

If little J would go back and read (if he can - he can also have Mommy read it to him), he'd see my kind words for Col Davis extend only to his activities prior to Fort Sumter.

Today, of course, the "Liberals" - in quotes, because these people are no kind of Liberal - are in control of the party, but the "southern racists" no longer belong to it, so you cannot say that the left exploits them as a section of their own party any more.

More white people than black people are on food stamps. (This is something I knew when I first heard about Gingrich's "food stamp president" remark, and I just saw it confirmed in print on Newsbusters.)

The most convention response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.

That's just typical projected moral rationalization of what might or could be vs. what really happened. Let's deal with reality here professor. Democrats were solely responsible for the Jim Crow South and yet it's republicans/conservatives that get painted with that brush and yet you nor a whole lot of other people who bring up Jim Crow never mention that fact.

They do, of course, exploit them as now members of the Republican Party (not Mr. Jefferson's Republicans) and that with particular venom, since they feel that the southerners should have stuck with the Democratic Party out of party loyalty, even if they no longer have any influence over party policies. Rank ingrates and traitors are what they are!

Mr Gingrich is not the answer to the republicans problem of finding a candidate to run against Mr Obama--my preferred solution is for the republicans to take control of the senate and let mr obama be a lame duck for the next four years.

And as an aside, it is quite amazing to me that some are still fighting the civil war--who knew.

Newt has a habit that bugs me. He brings his wife, Calista, into policy discussions regularly....."Calista and I yada yada yada". FYI Newt, Americans are sick of hearing about the candidate's spouse and family. We are interviewing candidates who will f-ing try and fix the country's problems and we don't give a damn about your wife!

The most convention response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.

So the migration by pre-Kennedy Democrats to the Republican Party is no more than a Democratic perception?

That and his belief he can be president bug me. However, Newt is a thinker- I give him credit for that- he looks down the road and asks what can America look like in 20-50 years and how can we get there.

So the migration by pre-Kennedy Democrats to the Republican Party is no more than a Democratic perception?

Most of the racist Democratic Senators and Representatives stayed with the party until they died or left office. The Republican takeover in 1994 got rid of most of the last of them, although some (e.g. Robert Byrd) hung on for years after.

As a society, we've decided that people who want to drive have to pass a driving test to demonstrate they know the rules of the road and that they possess the basic skills required to operate an automobile. That gives us all some level of comfort that the drivers we see on the road have taken their responsibility to drive seriously.

Why is it wrong to demand that people who want to vote and determine how we govern and tax ourselves can demonstrate they have a very, very basic understanding of government and civics? Why is it wrong to expect our citizens to take the right to vote as seriously as they take the right to drive?

In many ways, they can do alot more damage at the ballot box with their vote than they can do on the highways with a car.

Yeah, maybe I'm not comparing apples to apples. Many pre-Kennedy democrats at least in Alabama became Republicans. They may have been segregationist, they may not have been. Many, many reps in the Alabama Congressional delegation through the years have switched. My daddy switched. So many switched. But sure, some stalwarts perhaps for "branding" reasons stuck, like Wallace. However Wallace did run on a third party ticket for president. Outside the state, other big namers like Strom (a segregationist at one time) did switch. And yeah, Byrd was once a member of the KKK but he distanced himself from that part of his life, I think. Not too terribly familiar. And I think he came to support civil rights.

The white membership in the Democratic Party today is not the same power structure by any stretch that it was in the 60s and prior. But we can continue to play this game. It's fun.

Yglesias liken this to "the kind of techniques that were used to prevent African-Americans (and many poor whites as well) from voting in the Jim Crow South."

Of course he does. Because stoking racial (and every other kind of) resentment is what lefties do.

Gingrich's comment was foolish - no one running for office should ever tell the voters he thinks they're too stupid to be entrusted with deciding elections (which is what the comment implies).

Ann, you're right about having "an answer" - perhaps something along the lines of "David, incompetence is colorblind - what bothers me is you think we should Obama's foolish policies and failure are somehow above criticism because he's black."

For once, the analogy is actually appropriate - voting tests are *precisely* what was used in the Jim Crow South. Any serious politician who proposes one should expect to be compared to that. It's not that Gingrich was proposing a test to keep racial minorities from voting - it's rather that, given he's talking about history, he ought to know that tests to vote have a long and undistinguished history of being used as tools of racist oppression. He failed his own history test.

I agree, however, that the race card is played far too much, and people ought to look forward to solutions rather than backwards to grievances.

Yglesias, et al are either hopelessly out of touch and stuck in the past. They work tirelessly to maintain a racial divide and racial conflict in our nation because without it everyone would start to more closely evaluate the left wing philosophy and see its abundant failings.

Anyone who reads my comments here realizes I'm a fairly conservative/libertarian guy. Fairly regularly I've discussed my opinions with my kids and they seem to accept them for the most part.

Last night my son and daughter attended their high school prom. If you want to see a really handsome guy and an incredibly beautiful girl, and their dates look here.

You might also notice why I think all this liberal, left wing race baiting is bullshit. I wonder when was the last time these elitist left wing snobs visited a small rural town in Kentucky and got a good look at the reality of racial acceptance and equality.

it's peculiar that many republicans don't want to bring up the past, but yet, like newt, expect everyone to recite some form of it verbatem. to know one's history is to acknowledge the good with the bad, but to attempt to rewrite american history or distort facts, like the bachmann's of the world, that's where we have a problem.if we don't know our history, we're doomed to repeat it. and an unfortunate part of that history includes the jim crow south and the missed voting opportunities for blacks and poor whites. introducing ideas or laws that require answers the equivalent of questions on a standardized test in order to vote is repeating the actions of the jim crow south. frankly, i may not agree with the way that many americans vote, but voting should be a basic right of all citizens without interference.

DADvocate: Nice post. Our liberal friends have no idea about small towns, the south, rural America or the profound leap in racial acceptance that has occurred outside their field of view. Or interest. Anything that threatens their sanctimony is ignored. But then I am sure that for the most part they don't actually know or come in contact on a social basis with blacks.

Thanks PatCA and I agree with Joseph Sanderson. It seems to me though that Newt has gotten his BP medicine confused with mescaline from his college days that he had forgotten to throw out. It's really ruining the vibrato on his dog whistle that isn't him but is supposed to appeal to some people but is really a joke... You know how campaigns sell stuff like shirts with the candidate's name and stuff. You know how they say if you have lemons... The campaign might bring in some cash if they would sell Confederate flag boxer shorts.

The white membership in the Democratic Party today is not the same power structure by any stretch that it was in the 60s and prior.

Well, sure. Most of them are dead.

But pro-segregationist Democrats remained in positions of power for a very long time. Byrd is one example. Jimmy Carter is another. You could, I suppose, argue that they "changed" -- but it is more likely that they simply changed who they were pandering to. After all, the Democratic Party remains the party of institutional racism; it just changed the races it felt should be discriminated for or against. :)

In some ways, Gingrich is probably the smartest. He has probably thought longest, most deeply and perhaps abstractly about government, freedom, prosperity and "the world that works versus the world that doesn't."

I really like that he's willing to tell the truth even when it makes people mad. I respect that he hasn't given up even though many people despise him and aren't shy about saying so. I'm amazed at the number of projects he's involved in -- many groups trying to develop and implement a whole range of cutting-edge social transformation paradigms and technologies that will transform our country and our world for the better.

Unlike most of us, he actually understand how the government works. He gets how the balance of power put in place by our Constitution is created by the actual "checks and balances" among the three branches and the other power centers. He understands the role of taxes. He has a grasp of history and thus he has a long view. He understands how our government has been distorted and is being distorted by the Left.

I think he's genuinely committed to finding the ideas and policies that will allow our country to be its best.

I'm not sure if I will support him. As for pure ideas, yes I would. But whether I can support the man, I'm not sure.

To me, his explanation for his former marital infidelities seemed smarmy, self-pitying and self-serving. He loved his country so much that he over-worked and had sex outside his marriage? Oh please. I don't know if he can overcome that. (I detested Clinton's behavior, too. And actually so many of them.)

I also think Gingrich needs to get healthier; actually, physically healthier, more vital. I don't think he takes adequate care of his health.

Plus, I'm not sure about Callista -- she looks like she's been hair-sprayed into place from head to toe. Sorry to be unkind, but she is so very shiny. I'm not crazy about how he drags her into his speechmaking. I want him to have a happy home-life, but I'm not interested in yet another First Lady who helps to run the country.

However. Having said all that. He knows more and understands more and has a more comprehensive vision for how to restore our country to freedom, prosperity and liberty than most of his potential opponents put together. And that's why I think some of the personal shortcomings may not matter to me so much as we go through this nominating process. We may need someone with his level of understanding, his grasp of the big picture and of the many concrete details that need to be undone in order to restore our government to its Constitutional basis.

He might be what we need to peel away the insane layers of complexity and interference that have been created by the federal government for 80 years at least, and accelerated exponentially by this administration.

I think Gingrich understands how to restore our nation to its true purpose: to provide a safe place with predictable law and public policy, in which the government works for us and doesn't attempt to prey upon us, and in which the ordinary person gets a chance to make something of his or her life (the pursuit of happiness).

When we are allowed to be at our best, as a free country, we will create prosperity and all the good things that come with prosperity. It's not perfect, but it's better than abject poverty and failure.

So I'm watching. He certainly has the ideas and comprehension. Can he appeal to voters? Guess we'll see.

(BTW, if you haven't yet seen his talk in Detroit called "Change or Die" on YouTube, I highly recommend it whether you would vote for him or not, whether you despise him or not. Some of what he says is visionary.)

Learning English is a smoke screen. The queation is who stays and who doesn't. Many immigrant never learned English but their children did. English is quickly becoming the universal language and Spanish should only be taught to English speaking children as an elective but American history, citizenship, and economics should be mandatory.

..and to this day, the Democrats are the racist party. I've really got to hand it to LBJ for figuring out how to bring the economic progress of black Americans to a screeching halt by turning them into a new kind of share-cropper.

Au contraire, liberals/progressives/statists don't SEE at all. Instead, they feel. Therefore, they operate outside the realm of objective fact, and thus never have use for testing their beliefs against reality. That's how they can -- and do -- justify trying the same thing over and over again, each time saying "Well, THIS time..." or "We just didn't spend ENOUGH money last time."

I wouldn't mind seeing a requirement that you must be a tax payer to vote (other than just sales tax). This would include everyone who lives in tax payer households and would, of course, have an exception for those who truly are unable to work. This group of people actually have a vested interest in the fiscal health of our country. The professional parasitic class of all races are only interested in keeping the gravy train rolling no matter the cost to the producers in this country.

Everybody's looking for sanctification -- something to set him apart from the ugly mass of humanity.

Christians accomplish this by believing themselves to be washed in the blood of the Lamb. This can get ugly, as some Christians, in order to reinforce their identity as the "saved," go out of their way to play up the depravity of non-Christians. (Which can be defined broadly enough to include Catholics and Mormons.)

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Similarly, if there are not enough clearly evil heathens to go around, one has to make them -- even if you have to reach down into the stock of basically decent people, and declare them damned for trivial sectarian reasons.

Left-liberals' version of this involves picturing themselves as saints on the race question. To do that, they need to see themselves as substantially better than the damned. If there aren't enough genuine racists to go around, one has to make them. The doctrine of "dog whistles" and "code words" is perfectly crafted for this purpose.